


i shall not see the shadows; i will not see the rain

by Vestas_Kitchen



Category: History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Genderswapped characters, The History Girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 23:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vestas_Kitchen/pseuds/Vestas_Kitchen
Summary: Michelle Dakin wants to steal a car. Specifically, Crowther's car. And she'll take Posner home, too, but only if Scripps agrees to one request.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Adil Akthar- Aisha Akthar  
> Chris Crowther- Christina Crowther  
> Stuart Dakin- Michelle Dakin  
> James Lockwood- Jodie Lockwood  
> David Posner- Esther Posner  
> Peter Rudge- Linda Rudge  
> Donald Scripps- Donna Scripps  
> Anthony Timms- Karen Timms

Going to Christina's house for a girls night in because her parents were in Lanzarote was in retrospect, a bad idea. Not because Lockwood has passed out in the bath, or that Linda had left halfway through to have a kickabout with some lads in the street, or that she was pretty sure Aisha had spent most of the night being Karen's increasingly annoyed cushion before giving up and walking home, but because of one very simple reason. 

Michelle Dakin had been drinking, and now wanted to steal a car.

"No."

"But-"

"Michelle, I swear to Christ-"

" _ There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. _ "

"Please don't apply the logic of Prince Hamlet of Denmark to this situation."

"Scrippsy, darling, it's kind of a necessity."

"Stealing Christina's car because you don't want to walk in the rain is not a  _ necessity _ , Dakin."

Dakin glared at Scripps from across Crowther's exceptionally uncomfortable couch as the rain thrashed against the window. "Donna, it's practically pissing it down out there."

Scripps sighed into her tea. "I'm not enabling you to commit auto theft."

"You're not enabling me. You're justifying me."

Feeling a Dakin-induced headache coming on, Scripps squeezed her eyes closed. "Explain."

Dakin smirked and sipped from her coffee mug. "I am going to steal Crowther's car from the garage whether you like it or not."

"I gathered."

"However- if I have you with me, I can also drop you and Jodie off at home- and Tina can't sulk at all three of us at the same time." 

Scripps considered. Crowther being in another month-long feud with Dakin would be an absolute pain in the arse. And making sure that neither she nor Lockwood caught hypothermia from walking home four miles in the rain was  _ technically  _ a good deed.

She leaned back into the sofa, resigned. "I hate you, Michelle Dakin."

"Love you too, Donna. Now come help me drag poor Jodie out of Tina's bath."

"On one condition."

Dakin was already halfway out of the door with Crowther's car keys in her hand but turned back to bat her eyelashes in a failed attempt at gaining leniency. "And what would that be, Scrippsy?"

  
"We take Esther home too."

Dakin groaned and sunk to her knees in a parody of dramatism, clinging to the doorframe of the living room. "Don't do this to me, Donna."

Scripps rolled her eyes. She tended to do that a lot when Dakin was around. "Me and Esther live on the same street, Dakin. The three of us get the same bloody bus five times a week."

Dakin pouted on the floor. "Only if she doesn't sit in the front with me."

"Dakin, you're drunk and you can't drive when you're sober."

"Not true."

"Very true. I'm driving."

Michelle flung her hair off her shoulders. "Fine. But I have my condition."

"You're the one who wants to steal a car in the first place- you're not exactly in a negotiating position if I change my mind."

Dakin drunkenly crawled across the floor on her hands and knees, in what she probably thought was sexy but more resembled a limping caterpillar until she was right in front of Scripps' legs. Steadily she began to run her hands up Scripps's thighs, playing with the hem of her skirt. Donna felt her legs tighten together automatically at the contact, and looked down at Dakin, panicked, and Michelle giggled and put her head in Scripps's lap, looking up coquettishly with a smirk.

"Say something after you drop me off when you're driving home, Scrippsy."

Scripps felt herself go into a minor cardiac arrest. "I don't have anything to say."

Dakin giggled, burying her head in Scripps's knees, who's only terrified response was to clench them even tighter together. "Are you joking, Donna?" She snorted, and began the slow process of sliding herself up into Scripps's lap, pressing them together, and sharing sultry whispers.

"I've seen the way you look at girls. Not just me. Jodie. Aisha, a bit. Linda, when we're getting changed. But Posner the most. Posner especially. You two are much more alike-" Scripps felt Dakin's cool hand reach back down to her leg as she continued- "in ways you don't let on."

Suddenly Dakin's hand began to move up Scripps's leg again, but this time it went further, not stopping at the edge of the skirt but a cold smooth hand dipping underneath and moving tenderly to the sensitive skin of Scripps's inner thigh. Scripps was frozen, not even in fear, but in a multitude of conflicted feelings, all screaming, especially the not-insignificant portion of her that was howling at Dakin to just  _ keep going.  _ But instead, Dakin kept her hand still, but slowly left teasing caresses on Scripps's leg with her thumb as she leaned in closer, right next to her ear.

"I don't let on either, Scrippsy. Your secret's safe with me."

Then she withdrew her hand and sauntered off, hips swishing behind her as is the whole thing had never happened. Scripps stayed paralyzed, rooted into Crowther's armchair, trying to process a metric fuck-tonne of information at once.

Point one: Had Dakin just admitted that she was gay? Probably? That one would take a while- Dakin didn't exactly fit the bill.  _ Posner  _ fit the bill. Maybe Dakin was just drunk-talking but  _ in vino veritas  _ and all that.

Point two: Dakin had somehow come to the conclusion that Scripps was gay, which was ridiculous. Just because Scripps didn't have boyfriends and tried to fill that hole in her life with God and celibacy and scrawled down Virginia Woolf, And sometimes caught herself staring at other girls. And wondering what it would be like to kiss them and touch them. And what it would feel like if they did the same back until she couldn't take it. And just because she hadn't actually minded Dakin being sat on her and would have been happy to let Dakin carry on and even reciprocate a little if they were somewhere more private-

Okay, Donna was pretty fucking gay. How Dakin had come to this conclusion after Donna only realising and accepting it a month ago Scripps had no idea but was already pretty convinced Dakin was a she-demon already.

Point three: Shit. Dakin  _ knew. _

Scripps wasn't particularly bothered about Dakin knowing she was gay. Michelle knew Posner was gay as a daisy, and now Michelle was too, apparently. Donna could deal with that; what was going to be an actual pain in the arse was that Dakin was going to be absolutely relentless about getting Scripps to sleep with Esther.

One of the fundamental problems with Michelle Dakin, underneath the narcissism, massive insecurity and the hypersexuality was that she generally meant well. Sure, she was always a manipulative bitch about it, but she did. And quite frankly, she was far too utilitarian. Scripps could see that, in Dakin's strange mind, there were two problems- Posner, just in general, being a Byronic Romantic and a pining ingenue for Dakin's affection, and Scripps, who had wrapped herself in God to put off her own inevitable revelation of her innate queerness.

And as far as Scripps could tell, Dakin was just trying to kill two proverbial birds with one proverbial gigantic boulder launched by the proverbial catapult piloted by the unfortunately not proverbial Michelle Dakin.

It wasn't like Scripps was actually concerned or anything, it's just if Esther potentially  _ did  _ maybe take her hair out of her plaits and sit really close to her and lean in a bit and maybe put her head on Scripps's shoulder-

Well, Donna's resolve was weaker than a jelly girder. And Dakin knew it.  _ Especially  _ when it came to Posner. Whom Scripps may have been describing to Dakin in lieu of hy[otheticalperfect boyfriends for the last year.

Shit.

Scripps just sat there, stuck in Tina's armchair with a fundamental brain-processing error. There was a metallic jangle from the hall- Dakin must have picked up Crowther's car keys. Donna shot up like a rocket after Michelle, making a painstaking effort to delete the last few minutes from her memory for plausible deniability, running after Dakin while shouting for Posner.


	2. Chapter 2

It hadn't been easy trying to extract Jodie from Tina's bath. Lockwood might be as thin as a rake, Posner observed with envy, but she was also five foot nine and blessed with ample bosom, which made her heavier than a sackload of concrete when she couldn't move her limbs properly.

They'd propped her up in the back seat, leaning against the window. Every so often Jodie would stumble into something resembling sobriety, and throw out something about needing to be home soon. Esther shuddered- the heating in Crowther's car was always infamously broken. There was suddenly an ear-splitting shriek throughout the car- Dakin was messing with the radio from the front passenger seat.

Posner kicked it, at not too gently, either. "Fuck off with the radio, Michelle."

Dakin gave her the finger from the front seat. "Piss off. At least we brought you."

"And I bet that was all your idea, was it?"

Michelle didn't say anything, but left the radio alone and propped her feet up on the dashboard. It was silent for a while, with only the hard splatter of the rain on the roof and windows of the car bashing through the quiet. When the periodical flashes of light from the streetlamps ran over their faces, Esther could see that Michelle was pouting like a child whose hand had been found caught in the biscuit tin. So obviously Michelle hadn't planned on taking Esther home. And judging by the juddering in the shoulders of the figure of Donna driving the car, revealing the desire to giggle, Posner could tell who had gotten her this lift back to the north end of town.

Scripps braked for a red light on the main road, and Lockwood groaned, forehead leaned against the cold and condensation-covered window. "How much further to mine?"

Dakin squinted out into the rain. "We're at the top end of the town centre now, Jodie, up by the Wheatsheaf pub."

Donna opted for a more coherent answer. "Fifteen minutes."

Jodie grimaced, and Esther didn't blame her. Not to say the Scripps's driving was bad- it was objectively the best out of all eight of them- but the roads at the town centre were actual pieces of shit, and Posner had been lifted out of her seat by the car running against the huge potholes more than once. She could feel the food in her stomach swish about, making her feel vaguely queasy, and Posner was only in the middle-range of tipsy. Lockwood had been rock-bottom shitfaced, and Posner was more than ready to lean over and speed-wind Jodie's window down if needs came.

With Scripps concentrating on not crashing the car in the rain and Dakin whistling through her teeth in lieu of radio, there wasn't much conversation. Posner found herself awkwardly holding Jodie's hand in her own two, giving it the occasional sympathy pat.

Esther didn't usually let herself get this close, but Lockwood seemed to appreciate the gesture of comfort, giving her hand random squeezes. Posner tried to keep herself at a safe physical distance from the others if she could help it- but everyone had their moments of weakness. And she'd be lying to herself if she said that holding Lockwood's hand wasn't making her heart flutter, just a little bit.

She took what she could get and then hoped she wouldn't regret it on a later day. Esther supposed that's what she'd do from now until the day she died- look, love, and hide, all from a safe distance. The path of loving Michelle Dakin had been trodden once before, and had ended reasonably, considering. Miserable, but delightfully, poetically miserable.  _ 'Have more than you show; speak less than you know.' _

But Esther Posner was also not one to blatantly lie to herself- she was a realist, but not one devoid of hope. On sad days where she sat in parks or lazily read Emily Dickinson in bed or found herself dumbly staring into the middle distance she entertained herself, imagining a pretty little kitchen with herbs on the window-sill, two fat cats flopping around on the sofa, a safe job in the civil service and a beautiful, comfortable lady who loved her.

But like she said; a realist, not an optimist. More than likely there would be a succession of Dakin's, adored from afar and comfort only for nights alone. But for now, she had friends who sort-of-knew and sort-of-didn't-care, so whilst she had a pretty girl's hand in hers, she'd allow herself an indulgence.

Donna took the left turn onto the Highfield estate, and Jodie's block of flats came into view. Scripps pulled up in the car park at the base of the tower, not concentrating on staying in the lines of the space. Scripps went to unbuckle her seatbelt, but Michelle stopped her.

"If you get out of this car it'll be freezing when we get back- I'll take Jodie back to the flat. You and Posner stay here."

Esther wasn't sure how leaving her and Donna here was going to contribute anything to the temperature of Crowther's icebox of a car, but Dakin had that look on her face, the one that meant 'I'm going to get my own way whether you like it or not.'. Posner had seen that look multiple times, and it usually meant that Michelle had planned something, and Dakin's plans were rarely pleasant.

Donna and Michelle were currently playing an intense game of mental table tennis from the front of the car, judging by the looks they were shooting across at each other. Dakin still had that intent face, and Scripps looked like she was either going to throw a punch or burst into tears. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was an intense few, before Scripps leaned back in the driver's seat and practically whispered "Okay."

Esther had never seen Michelle move so fast- okay, maybe not, there was the time when they got a reasonably attractive supply teacher for PE for a few months, which coincided exactly with when Michelle got really into athletics- but Dakin was dragging a groaning Lockwood up into the building at record speed, with nothing but the rain pattering on the roof of the car between the remaining girls.

There usually wasn't awkward silence between Posner and Scripps, but Michelle's hurried exit had made it so, and Donna seemed increasingly reluctant to talk as the seconds ticked on, making the silence in the car even more oppressive than before. Esther tried to breach the uncomfortable atmosphere by quietly singing the first song that came into her head.

" _ Raindrops keep falling on my head, but that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning red..." _

Donna laughed down her nose, and turned to the backseat. "Do you want to come up front?"

"But Dakin..."

Scripps rolled her eyes. "Dakin's got out of the car, she's forfeited the right to the front seat."

Fair enough, thought Posner as she clambered through the gap in the chairs, being careful enough to not get stuck on the gear stick, and plopping herself in the passenger seat next to Scripps. Esther pulled her coat further across her- it really was freezing in the car.

Donna noticed, and made to take off her cardigan, and Esther tried to refuse, but Scripps raised an eyebrow and her resolve melted, wrapping the giant knitted monstrosity- probably homemade, by the looks of it- over the top of the thin jacket she'd come out in.

The silence continued as they shivered together. Dakin was taken far too long, even if the lift in the flats was broken and she'd had to drag Jodie up the stairs. Posner wasn't a naturally suspicious person, but when it came to Dakin is became somewhat of a necessity.

Scripps coughed. "Rain's still coming down hard-"

"What's Dakin planning?"

Donna's eyes widened in shock. "I don't-"

"It's Dakin. She's always planning something."

Scripps groaned, and leaned her head on the steering wheel. "She's really not that subtle, is she?"

Esther scoffed. "I'm not sure Michelle knows the definition of the word. But you're avoiding the question."

Donna didn't move her head off the wheel. "She wants us to... talk."

Posner's mouth suddenly went dry. "About what?"

"Something. With me." Scripps's voice was barely more than a whisper. "And you. I suppose. Tangentially. Tangentially about you."

Esther heard Donna's voice tail off from a whisper to barely audible, and she was just opening and closing her mouth wordlessly, like a goldfish. It was like the words hurt to say or there weren't really words at all or they were blocked by something bigger than her will to say them.

Posner knew that feeling. It was the one that stabbed her in the heart whenever she went to a wedding, it was the one that screamed when she saw couples holding hands, and it was the one that cried when she saw any of the other girls with puppy-eyed, adoring faces that she knew she would never receive.

She could barely hear her own voice when she filled in Donna's reluctant words for her. "You're like me."

Scripps's silence was answer enough.

Esther didn't know what to say- it wasn't ever like she'd had to say it. In fact, that might have been the first time she'd admitted it out loud. But everyone had already known with her, but she'd had no idea about Scripps. Did anyone? Well, Dakin did, apparently, but Dakin knew most things.

"I'm sorry."

Scripps's head shot up. "What for?"

Esther shrugged, dumbfounded. "I don't know Scrippsy. That we're the same, I suppose."

"What's that got to do with you?"

Posner shrunk into herself, feeling guilty over what was logically nothing but felt so irrationally enormous. "I don't know."

She went to open the door of the car, Scripps noticed. "Where are you going?"

"I'll walk- you can't want me around after that, I'm sorry-"

"No! Esther, stop, it's pissing it down!" exclaimed Scripps, grabbing onto Esther's arm, which was reaching for the door handle. "I don't- I want you, Pos, for fucks sake, I like  _ you. _ " Donna was choking the words out like it hurt her very soul to say them, clutching Posner's arm like it was painful to let go. "I like you."

Posner could feel her heart turn to lead in her chest, weighing her down. "Why?"

Donna gave a long, beleaguered, tired sigh. "I don't know. You're just... you. You never paint your nails neatly and you sing so well and you're subtle as a brick wall. Your plaits are always loose and your blazer a size too big, and you are the only person left in the year who still wears their skirt the right length. I don't know, Pos. I just want you, and I hope that's okay."

Esther gave it a second, and then said her part, a soft little "Okay."

Scripps gaped. "What?"

Posner fidgeted, tugging at the end of the sleeves of Scripps's cardigan. "I mean... it's not like I haven't thought about it. More that I've never considered it a possibility. With all due respect, you're a lot better at hiding things than I am."

"You did come to school when you were seven and tell everyone you were going to marry Judy Garland."  

Posner cringed, then giggled. "Exactly. But... considering everyone I know, well, I'm glad it's you. And... I'd like to give it a go. If you're okay with me more growing into it."

Donna's hand cupped her face, pianist fingers soft from flowery soap. "I'm okay with whatever you're able to give."

Then Esther kissed her, slowly, nervously, like lowering herself into a hot bath. It was short and soft, and surprisingly chaste, but it was the start of something bigger, and Posner found herself quite comfortable with it.

When they broke away, Scripps was grinning like an idiot, but shook herself sensible, grabbing the car keys. "Home?"

Posner nodded. "Home." Then she remembered their third passenger, who still had not come back. 

"What about Dakin?"

Scripps turned the keys in the ignition. "Fuck it. Let's leave her."

 

* * *

The next day, Scripps was sat in her garden when Michelle came trudging around the corner still wearing last night's clothes. She glared at Donna, who grinned back at the other girl and put up her middle finger. Then quite suddenly, Dakin's face morphed into its usual triumphant smirk, and she raised an eyebrow before turning into her own front garden.

Posner had walked out of Scripps's door, into the garden, sighed, sat down next to Donna, still wearing a borrowed pair of Scripps's pyjamas, clutching a mug of tea. "Are you sure she deserved that? Walking home, I mean."

Scripps pondered. "Probably not. But let me have this."

Esther snorted down her nose and took another sip of her tea. Watching Dakin exhaustedly struggle with her front door key, she giggled.  "I suppose there's a certain schadenfreude to it."

As Michelle finally stumbled into her house, Donna snuggled up close to Esther on the bench in the garden, laying her head on Esther's shoulder.

" _If these delights thy mind may move..._ "

Scripps could almost feel Esther rolling her eyes, before Posner snuck her hand around Donna's back bringing them even closer together, and responding,

" _Then live with me, and be my love_."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :)


End file.
